Preaching to the Choir

by Kitty Parker

  Oh shit, I realized, I'm actually going to have to see him today. This is going to raise the meaning of awkwardness to a whole new level.

  Considering the manner in which Kurt had practically bolted from my room after the horny fog had dissipated from his overly male brain, I predicted a fairly uncomfortable encounter. I knew how it would go; there was always a pattern to these things. We would avoid each other until circumstances threw us together and forced us to interact. We would never mention what had happened between us and simply act as though nothing had changed in our relationship. Deep down, though, we would both know that this was a lie. Things would never be the same, no matter how elaborately we pretended.

  It really was a depressing pattern.

  He must think I'm a total nutter.

  I had completely made an ass of myself. I would be lucky if Kurt even deigned to speak to me again. I could have taken solace in the fact that he had initially returned my kiss, but then again, he was a guy. I would've been worried if he hadn't reacted.

  He's a damn good kisser, though…

  I couldn't help that thought from flitting across my mind. Although some of the details from the previous night were a bit fuzzy to me, I remembered with crystalline clarity how amazing his lips made me feel. I could no longer deny the fact that Kurt and I had chemistry. However, I also knew that I had squandered any chances of anything even remotely romantic happening between us with my drunken idiocy

  I really felt like banging my head against the wall repeatedly, but with my hangover, I felt that such a show of frustration would likely turn out to be a bad idea.

  There was a soft click as the door opened and Jane poked her head in. "Lotte, darling," she began. "I know that you probably feel like shit right now, but you really need to get your ass in the shower. We're all going to some huge group lunch thing in half an hour."

  I looked at the clock on the bedside table and groaned. Eleven thirty. Far too early, in my opinion.

  Mumbling a "thanks" in Jane's general direction, I heaved myself out of bed and trudged into the bathroom. Locking the door behind me, I turned on the tap and took a good look at myself in the mirror.

  Oh yes, I looked like absolute crap.

  Frowning at my reflection, I stripped and stepped into the shower. For a good few minutes, I did nothing but stand there, letting the warm water caress my body. When I finally summoned up the energy to move my limbs, I squeezed a bit of my body wash onto my palms and began to massage it onto my skin. As I scrubbed my neck and shoulders, I hit a tender spot and winced.

  Scheiße, he gave me a hickey.

  It occurred to me that everything had happened in the very bathroom in which I was standing. As I looked around at the tiled floor, the porcelain toilet, the blue shower curtain, and all the other minute details of the room, the particulars of the previous night's events came into even sharper focus.

  Oh fuck, did I really strip in front of him?

  I also recalled saying something to him that involved the two of us being married. No wonder he'd been so flustered. Any eighteen year-old guy would have been. I squeezed a dollop of shampoo onto my head and worked it into a lather, all the while brooding about what a complete moron I was.

  When I had sufficiently washed myself, I shut off the tap and immediately made my way over to the mirror. Wiping away the condensed steam that had collected on its surface, I took a good look at my hickey and wrinkled up my nose. It was a nasty reddish-purple color and would doubtlessly be painfully obvious to anyone who cared to take a glance at me. I wrapped a towel around myself and hid the telltale love-bite by slinging my damp hair over my shoulder. Hopefully, I'd be able to get at my makeup bag before anyone noticed.

  I quietly opened the bathroom door and padded across the carpet toward my suitcase. Luckily, Eden and Jane had both made themselves comfortable in the sitting area. Brigid, however, was curled up in an armchair next to the bed, absorbed in The Importance of Being Earnest. She had finished All Quiet on the Western Front a few days earlier, and her latest selection was, in my opinion, an excellent choice. I only hoped that is was engrossing enough for her not to notice my presence. I carefully unzipped my bag and grabbed my makeup case, then turned around to sneak back to the bathroom.

  Brigid was staring right at me. I nearly had a heart attack.

  Nervously, I wrapped my towel tighter around my sopping wet body. "Um, hey, Brig. What's going on?"

  "Not much," she replied. "Just reading."

  "Oh…alright then." I shifted uncomfortably.

  Brigid cocked her head to one side, giving me a calculating look. "Is that a hickey?"

  "No!" I immediately denied. "No, of course not. It's um, well, it's...from a paintball. Yeah. A paintball."

  She raised an eyebrow. "A paintball? I wasn't aware that you'd gone paintballing, Lotte."

  Damn. She was getting suspicious. Still, I decided to go with my excuse. It would have seemed even faker if I changed my story at that point, after all. "Well, I didn't actually go paintballing. If I had, I definitely would have invited you. I was basically just walking along down Unter den Linden, minding my own business, and these two random boys came running out from some side street with their paintball gear. So I, um, I told them off for running around with guns and stuff, and they came after me! They chased me all the way down the street, through the Brandenburg Gate, and over toward the Reichstag. I guess that at some point, one of them must have taken a shot at me, cause I felt this stinging in my neck, and there was a big blue blotch from the paint and all. So yeah, uh, they kept chasing me all the way over to that plaza in front of the Reichstag, and then I started screaming for help, and these two huge guards - I swear, they must have been six-foot-six and three hundred pounds or something - they just came barreling out of the building and took those boys down in a full running tackle! It was totally insane!"

  I took a few deep breaths and looked over at Brigid hopefully.

  She stared right back at me skeptically. Naïve though she was, it was obvious that she didn't buy my paintball story at all. I flashed her my most innocent smile.

  "Right…" she deadpanned.

  "You don't believe me?" I attempted to appear insulted that she had questioned my integrity.

  "Not a chance, pal."

  I shrugged. "It was worth a shot."

  "So who's the lucky guy?" she asked.

  I sighed. "I really don't want to talk about it, Brig."

  "Bad lay, huh?"

  "What? No! No, Brigid! Just…no!" I couldn't believe that those words had just come out of my pet freshman's mouth.

  Oh, the youth of today. How easily they are corrupted.

  Shaking my head, I returned to the bathroom to cover up my hickey. I could only hope that my concealer was strong enough for that sucker. If it wasn't, I was going to have to come up with a better excuse than psychotic paintballing German boys.

  ----------------

  "Ow!" Elliot yelped. "Will you two stop playing footsie? That's the second time you've kicked me in the shin!"

  Eden smiled sheepishly. "Sorry."

  "Nah, dude, it was my fault," Matt insisted. "I'm the one who started it." He draped his arm around his girlfriend's shoulders.

  Elliot rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah…"

  I sat next to Eden at the long, rectangular table, absentmindedly shredding my napkin as I waited for the food to arrive. Bryce, seated on my right hand side, was having an animated conversation with Jane and Luke about the merits of boxers over briefs (wonderful lunchtime conversation, that). Across the table, Brigid was holding up her spoon and staring at it very intensely. I had a feeling that she was attempting to bend it with her mind. She did interesting things when she was bored. Adam and Kurt had both been rather quiet, although the former would occasionally whisper something somberly into the ear of the latter, which routinely garnered little or no reaction. Kurt appeared to be in a sour mood.

  "Fuck, where the fuck is the fucking food?"

 
; Oh yes. Kurt was definitely in a sour mood. I had the misfortune of knowing that I'd caused it with my rambunctious, drunken behavior.

  Eden was visibly taken aback by the sudden outburst. "Whoa, Kurt, calm down."

  "Can it, Eden," he growled, glaring at her.

  If the circumstances had been any different (meaning if I wasn't attempting to avoid interacting with Kurt at all costs), I would have bawled him out for speaking to my best friend that way. As it were, Matt took care of the situation for me.

  "Hey!" he objected. "You have no reason to snap at her like that! She didn't do anything wrong."

  Kurt sighed and stared at his lap. "Sorry, Ede."

  An uncomfortable silence descended upon the table.

  Bryce cleared his throat. "So, uh, did I ever tell you guys about the time that my uncle got drunk at my grandma's eightieth birthday party?"

  Trust Bryce to remedy an awkward silence with a completely random anecdote. I wished that he'd picked a different one, though, since a story about someone making a fool of himself while drunk was bound to serve as a painful reminder of a certain mistake that I'd made fairly recently.

  Jane shook her head. "No, let's hear it."

  "Alright," he began. "So my parents threw this huge party for my grandma's birthday up at York Beach in Maine. We had a bunch of tiki torches and things like that, and there was a crapload of booze, cause my cousin runs this trendy bar down in Manhattan. I have no idea how it happened, really, but I guess Uncle Larry had a few too many glasses of that spiked punch or something, because he started teetering around and smacking everyone on the ass. He does that when he's drunk, you see. Anyway, when he got around to Grandma Fannie, she flipped a shit and started telling him off for getting drunk at her party, yelling things like 'I raised you better than that, boy!' and whatever. She's still pretty strong for an old woman, you see, so she basically tackled him and started-"

  "Lotte," Elliot interrupted. "Is that a hickey?"

  Bryce stopped talking immediately. All eyes turned to me.

  Oh shit. I must have rubbed the concealer off by accident.

  "BRYCE!" I squeaked, my voice unnaturally high. "Uh, Bryce, keep going with the story. It was just getting good."

  "No, no," he chuckled. "This sounds far more interesting than my grandma kicking my uncle's ass."

  I gulped, looking at the expectant faces of my friends and noticing that Kurt refused to meet my eyes.

  "I, uh…" I began. "I got hit with, uh, a rock?"

  "A rock," Elliot deadpanned.

  "Yeah, a rock," I insisted. "It got kicked up by one of those, uh… street-sweeper… thingies."

  Luke raised an eyebrow at me. "And it just happened to hit you right in the spot where a guy would give you a hickey?"

  I shrugged. "Well, yeah."

  Adam made a point of catching my eye. "I believe her."

  The unspoken message he was sending me, though, said something completely different, namely "I know that you're lying, and I know why, but I'll bail you out anyway." I tried to send him some "thank you, you are my hero" vibes in return.

  "Those street-sweepers do kick up a lot of random crap, you know," he went on. "I just missed getting hit by a huge shard of glass once."

  "Right," I began. "Case closed. Moving on."

  "You know I'm going to ask you about this later, right?" Eden whispered in my ear.

  I nodded. I had every intention of telling Eden - and only Eden - what had happened. I just figured that a table seating a large group of my friends in the middle of a restaurant filled with my fellow choir members wasn't exactly the proper venue for such a confession.

  BAM!

  We all snapped our heads around to stare at the dazed pigeon that had just flown into one of the restaurant windows. It blinked a few times, got shakily to its feet, ruffled its feathers, and strutted off down the street, bobbing its head in the silly way that pigeons tend to do.

  Luke screwed up his face in confusion. "What the hell…"

  "Damn rats with wings…" Brigid muttered.

  "Bryce does a killer pigeon impression, you know," Eden announced.

  "Really?" asked Matt. "Let's see it!"

  Bryce stared at him. "In public?"

  "Yes, in public," Jane insisted. "Unless, of course, you're chicken."

  "Oh no you didn't, Ms. Jane Chang!" he gasped.

  She clucked a few times in response.

  "Fine." He took a moment to compose himself. Cocking his head to one side, he cooed, soundly uncannily like the bird he was imitating. He bobbed his head a few times, then pretended to peck at my shoulder. Laughing, I played along, taking a piece of bread from the basket in the center of the table and ripping off a piece to "feed" to the "pigeon." I held it out in the palm of my hand. Bryce looked at it curiously, cocked his head a few more times, and bent down to snatch it with his teeth.

  This garnered a laugh from everyone except for Kurt, who was still sulking.

  Grinning, I ripped off a second piece of bread and prepared to toss it into Bryce's mouth. He watched it expectantly, following my hand with his eyes as I pulled it back and threw.

  Reaching with his body to try to catch his snack, Bryce gave a yelp as his chair toppled over, causing him to land on the carpeted floor with a loud thud.

  Even Kurt had to laugh at that.

  ----------------

  "Lotte, darling, you wouldn't happen to have a sharpie on you, by any chance, would you?" Jane smiled at me sweetly.

  I considered this to be a bit of an odd request to make ten minutes before the start of a concert, but who was I to judge?

  "Nah, sorry," I replied. "I think Mr. Faulkner keeps one in his bag, though."

  "Excellent." She strode across the backstage room in which the choir was patiently waiting, a mischievous grin twisting her lips. Locating the black leather attaché stuffed with a large assortment of unorganized papers and God knows what else, she quietly opened it and dug around inside for a minute or two before extracting a large, red permanent marker.

  I eyed her suspiciously as she returned. "And just what exactly are you planning to do with that sharpie, Jane Chang?"

  She batted her eyelashes innocently. "Never you mind, Lotte Leisch. You just think about your aria."

  I rolled my eyes affectionately, figuring that there must have been some sort of method to Jane's madness. Fighting off the small flutters of apprehension bubbling in my stomach, I discreetly poked my head out of the doorway that led to the altar of the church, aka our "stage," and took a look around. The sanctuary of the Zionskirche was relatively full of spectators, which was somewhat surprising, considering that we were only an amateur high school choir. Upon closer inspection, however, I noted that a good number of those present - perhaps thirty or so - were either my relatives, their neighbors, their friends, or their co-workers. I even recognized Opa Karl's chiropractor, though I had no idea how Opa had suckered him into coming. Of course, this entire group of people was seated together, front and center

  "Is there a big crowd out there?" asked Eden, coming up behind me.

  I nodded. "I think that a bunch of them are only here because Opa Karl dragged them, though."

  Eden looked out at the audience and, recognizing certain members of my family, giggled. "Looks like you've got your own little cheering section there, Lotte."

  "Whoopee," I deadpanned, knowing that the evening would not pass without some relative or another embarrassing me somehow.

  "Hey, check this out." Eden thrust a piece of paper into my hands.

  "What is this?" I asked, squinting at the italicized text.

  "The program for the concert," she replied. "I nicked one from the stand by the front door."

  I gave the pamphlet a once-over. It read as follows:

  The Charles Sumner Memorial High School Choir and Chamber Orchestra

  Under the Leadership of Theodore M. Faulkner

  Proudly Present

  Felix Mendelssohn's "Elijah"

&n
bsp; An Oratorio in Two Acts

  Act One

  Introduction…………Nate Waugh (bass)

  Overture…………Orchestra

  1. Help, Lord!…………Choir

  1A. Recitative…………Eden Jensen (soprano), Elliot Trenton (tenor), Collette Taylor (alto), and Seth Vernon (bass)

  2. Lord, Bow Thine Ear…………Eden Jensen, Collette Taylor, and choir

  3. Ye People, Rend Your Hearts…………Adam Evers (tenor)

  4. If With All Your Hearts…………Adam Evers

  5. Yet Doth the Lord…………Choir

  6. Elijah, Get Thee Hence…………Alicia Townshend (alto)

  7. For He Shall Give His Angels…………Eden Jensen (soprano 1), Georgiana Bancroft (soprano 2), Alicia Townshend (alto 1), Collette Taylor (alto 2), Elliot Trenton (tenor 1), Giles Arden (tenor 2), Bryce Yates (bass 1), and Luke Warren (bass 2)

  8. What Have I to Do with Thee…………Jane Chang (soprano) and Nate Waugh

  9. Blessed are the Men Who Fear Him…………Choir

  10. As God the Lord of Sabaoth…………Nate Waugh, Conner Eaton (tenor), and choir

  11. Baal, We Cry to Thee…………Choir

  12. Call Him Louder!…………Nate Waugh and choir

  13. Call Him Louder!…………Nate Waugh and choir

  14. Draw Near, All Ye People…………Nate Waugh

  15. Cast Thy Burden Upon the Lord…………Lotte Leisch (soprano), Devin Parker (alto), Matt Wilson (tenor), and Kurt Matthews (bass)

  16. O Thou, Who Makest Thine Angels Spirits…………Nate Waugh and choir

  17. Is Not His Word Like a Fire?…………Nate Waugh

  18. Woe Unto Them Who Forsake Him!…………Alicia Townshend

  19. O Man of God, Help Thy People!…………Adam Evers

  19A. Thou Hast Overthrown Thine Enemies…………Nate Waugh, Brigid Kelly (soprano), and choir

  20. Thanks Be to God!…………Choir